Venice!

Venice Travel Blog

We decided to try something new in Venice, and stay in a campground. Venice is so freaking expensive that it was much more affordable that way. We were a little nervous to see what we would find. We were very pleasantly surprised! The place had a pool, bar, small grocery store, and internet. Our room was a small trailer, with just 2 beds and a small cupboard. Cramped but cute. It was about a 20 minute bus ride outside of the city, and they ran shuttles out every hour. We lay by the pool for an hour, then headed into the city. Venice is the strangest and coolest city. We spent the whole first day just walking around and gawking. And eating pizza and gelato, of course! So good!

Here are some of the highlights/lowlights from our 2-day stay in Venice:

- The damn rooster. Right beside our campground...there was a farm. And on that farm, there was a rooster. Who woke up at 4:30am and wanted everyone to know it. Every 2 minutes that stupid animal was crowing. To top that, there were several baby roosters who would crow right after the big one did. So it was one loud crow, then 10 small ones (much like an echo) starting at 4AM. Vanessa attempted to throw a rock at it during one bathroom run, but was unable to find any good sized rocks. Apparently she was not the first to have this idea. I vowed to eat chicken for every meal that day.

- Pool party/french lesson. Our first night in the campground, we met a group of aussies and proceeded to drink some wine and watch a football game with them. After a few bottles...then a few more (they were only $4), we decided it would be brilliant to sneak into the pool. The pool was right in the center of the campgroud, surrounded by transparent glass walls, so we werent exactly trying to be sneaky. No point! After some racing and fooling around, a voice starts yelling at us in French. It was the campground security guard. We climb out, and Vanessa proceeds to lie to him in her limited french about why we were in the pool (the door was open, le port etait ouvre!). So hilarious! While she distracted him, the rest of us climbed back over the fence (momentarily deserting her, but her french really needed the practice).

- Rude Italians. It seems that Italians dont appreciate young travellers. We were scolded more times in Venice than I have been since I was about 15. Every time we let our guard down, someone was getting mad at us in Italian. A lady kicked us out of a store for pausing too long in front of the air conditioning vent in her store. An off-duty policeman kicked us off of a staircase we were sitting on to each lunch (there was plenty of room for people to get by, and he didnt say a word to the other people who were also sitting there). The kicker, however, was when we tried to have a light lunch at a small restaurant on a canal. We had about an hour to kill before we could catch our shuttle, so we stopped at the restaurant for a bite. The waiter was friendly when we first sat down, recommending some dishes and bringing us our menus. When we ordered, we each just asked for a side salad and said we wanted to share a pizza. He looked pretty sour at this point, and asked if we wanted wine. We said no...and he turned our water glasses over (forcibly), grabbed the menus out of our hands, and told us that pizza by the slice was just down the street. He kicked us out of his restaurant for not ordering enough! The stupidest thing is that there were about 10 empty tables outside, nobody was waiting for the table. We were so shocked, we didnt even know what to say. We left, went to the restaurant next door (which was nicer anyways), and gave them our business. These were the most extreme examples, though we felt the whole time in Venice that we were being treated much less friendly than older tourists or anyone who spoke italian.

- Canal taxi. This taxi saved venice for us. We caught a water taxi all the way up the grand canal, which cost us $6 as opposed to the $90 it would have cost to take a gondola! It was an amazing ride, all the way through the center of venice. Such a neat city. We were much cheered up by the ride, and decided we liked venice after all (even though we felt like backpacking scum).

Thats all from Venice! We caught a train to Ancona from there, and took an overnight ferry to croatia, where we are now. Such a beautiful place! More to come!